GTA Online Success Led to Axing of GTA V DLC, Says Ex Rockstar Dev

Grand Theft Auto Online is a “cash cow” by all means and definitions. If you don’t agree with that, you only need to look at the figures. Unfortunately this has some drawbacks, and cash cow also happens to be the term used by someone who worked on Grand Theft Auto V, Joseph Rubino when talking about the eternally mystifying, mythical “story DLC”.

The former Rockstar senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer talked to SanInPlay on YouTube about his role in the Agent Trevor DLC that never happened, and was datamined from GTA 5 last year, saying:

I was one of the main editors, camera artist and doing a lot of the second unit on-stage stuff. [Then] we split our teams into two, so I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC, which [Trevor actor] Steven Ogg was a very important part of, and then some of the team overlapped and went to Red Dead Redemption 2 early on.

Unfortunately, when asked why this GTA 5 DLC never happened, Rubino couldn’t lie about the impact GTA Online had in its cancelation, saying, “It was so much of a cash cow, and people were loving it so much that it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would out-compete that.”

Rubino shared he felt “a little upset” that Rockstar canceled the premium expansion as it was already half-complete. This revelation comes months after Trevor’s voice actor, Steven Ogg, confirmed that Rockstar never followed up after having him record lines for the additional in-game content.

The good news – depending on how you feel about it –  is Rubino confirmed that certain aspects of the canceled GTA V DLC eventually made it to GTA Online, which we now know influenced The Doomsday Heist update that was released back in 2017.

If you dig deep enough into GTA Online’s history, it’s the resting place of several half-complete ideas by Rockstar. Aside from Trevor’s canceled GTA 5, some of the ideas from the defunct “Cops n Crooks DLC” made it to the Bottom Dollar Bounties update.

Some of the assets for the expansion, Zombie Apocalypse, were later repurposed for the Arena War update for GTA Online. However, Rockstar never picked up the “Alien Invasion” DLC. If we’re being honest, it wouldn’t surprise us if the bulk of the ideas for the occasional Alien update came from this expansion.

Looking at all the canceled DLC puts into perspective how much GTA 5’s development, and possibly Red Dead Redemption 2’s, changed because of GTA Online’s success. It’s crazy to think that GTA Online has become this multi-billion-a-year game when, at the start, it barely even worked.

How much this will affect Rockstar’s approach to Grand Theft Auto 6 remains to be seen. If we’re judging by the GTA 6 Easter eggs and what we know so far about the next GTA Online, don’t expect Rockstar to fully complete all its DLC plans for GTA 6, no matter how awesome we may feel they are.

Who knows? We’d be glad to be proven wrong.